Panic

If there is a single person in America who thought "Hmm, D'Angelo's astonishingly sexy video for 'Untitled (How Does It Feel?)' could really be improved if it instead starred the white, ectomorphic frontman of a Las Vegas emo band," please come forward. It's hard to tell the precise ratio of irony, homage, self-regard and self-deprecation in Panic! at the Disco's new clip for " Girls/Girls/Boys . " It's a shot-for-shot remake of the classic D'Angelo video that was so hot it almost sabotaged his career.

This makes sense on some levels, just not the ones most amateur baseball managers hang out on. The Dodgers announced this afternoon that Clayton Kershaw will start tonight's Game 4 against the Braves. They're going for the kill right now, pitching Kershaw on short rest for the first time in his career. That part is easy to understand. And if their ace should somehow falter Monday, the Dodgers can come back with Zack Greinke for a decisive Game 5. PHOTOS: 20 greatest Dodgers of all time Sure, get all that.

As part of the stopgap spending bill that would "defund Obamacare," House Republicans have proposed a temporary exemption to the debt limit, ostensibly to prevent the government from defaulting on Treasury securities. But the exemption would protect only bondholders, leaving other creditors at risk should Congress fail to raise the debt limit next month. If the Treasury can't keep the commitments Congress has already made to federal workers, contractors and beneficiaries, it could lead investors to panic, damage Washington's credit rating and exacerbate the fiscal problems the House GOP says it's trying to solve.

Gosh, the Dodgers suck. They've lost four of their last eight games. The Boston Red Sox played with them. They'll be, what, probably five games out by the middle of September? Or maybe not. Just maybe this terrifying two-game losing streak ends Monday. You know, when Zack Greinke starts. Of if not, then the next day, when Clayton Kershaw heads to the mound. It's foreign stuff for the Dodgers, losing a series for the first time since June 14-16. Finding another team that looks back without fear, that can throw strong pitching, top defense and timely hitting at them.

GAZA CITY - The homemade YouTube video features four masked men in matching T-shirts, standing like soldiers as one reads a statement lambasting Hamas for killing civilians and calling for the overthrow of the Gaza Strip's Islamist government. They call their new Palestinian youth group Tamarod Gaza - using the Arabic word for "rebellion" - after the similarly named Egyptian protest movement that helped bring down Islamist President Mohamed Morsi and Hamas' mentor, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Barbecue grills and lawn chairs littered a cordoned-off Simi Valley park Friday morning, left behind after onlookers fled a major malfunction at a fireworks show the night before. At least 28 people gathered at Rancho Santa Susana Community Park were injured about 9:20 p.m., when officials believe at least one pyrotechnic device prematurely detonated in its mortar, causing a chain reaction that tipped over other fireworks and launched them into the crowd of spectators. Josh Antonucci, 16, went to the show with about 20 family members, like they do every year.

On Tuesday afternoon Duane Jensen was driving home from a round of golf when his cellphone rang and he was told of a fire in Black Forest. A bad one. He glanced out the window and saw a plume of smoke rising in the distance. He suddenly felt sick. He lives close to that spot. And he had been through this before. "It was like a horrible punch in the gut," he said Friday. Almost exactly a year before, he was standing on the deck of his house in the Mountain Shadows subdivision with the glorious views and the shrubs and trees he had babied until they bloomed like showpieces.

Re "Those outdated HIV laws," Editorial, June 6 I agree that it is time to repeal outdated laws that make it a crime for a person infected with HIV to spit at, bite or throw his or her blood on others. However, your editorial wrongly excuses those who enacted those laws. You reported that such laws "might have seemed reasonable at the height of the AIDS panic. " They did not. They contributed to that panic. I should know, for I was already enforcing Los Angeles' landmark AIDS anti-discrimination law, which combated such fear and misinformation.

When the pressure reached its nail-biting peak, when the St. Louis Blues twice took leads over the Kings on Monday and could have seized control of Game 4 of their playoff series - and the series itself - the Kings knew it was time to remain purposeful, not to panic. "We've been in that position before and I think these guys don't get too down on themselves," forward Jeff Carter said Tuesday. "We stayed calm and we chipped away. " Goals by Carter and Dustin Penner brought the Kings from 2-0 down to even before the end of the first period.

One of the most fearsome statistics in the war against the federal deficit has always been the country's ratio of debt to gross domestic product. When this ratio reaches 90%, the argument goes, watch out -- lower economic growth is on the horizon. And that's scary, because that's where the U.S. has been heading. This idea comes from Harvard economists Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart, who featured it in a 2010 paper and popularized it in a book entitled " This Time is Different : Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.